On February 28th 2024, Canadian climber and Rab athlete, Bronwyn Hodgins, claimed her first 8c+, sending ‘La Rubia’ at Villanueva del Rosario in southern Spain. What started as an intentional period of rest and recovery after back-to-back expeditions, quickly spiralled into a two-year-long climbing and filmmaking project that would push Bronwyn to the edge, physically and mentally. Despite contesting with a line several jumps in difficulty above what she had climbed before, Bronwyn’s big wall experience and relentless determination pushed her all the way to the final bolt. Beyond the climbing, Bronwyn documented the entire project alongside an all-female crew. The resulting film champions the importance of supportive female friendships and is an insight into the workings of the climbing mind, as she grapples with what taking a ‘rest’ really means.

Bronwyn is best known for her big wall free climbing and first ascents in remote locations. From the vertical granite of El Capitan to the faraway mountains of Baffin Island, sea cliffs in Greenland and desert cliffs in Mexico, she’s no stranger to months of prolonged effort and mental resilience in pursuit of her goals. Her climbing career began late by professional standards. At age 20 she joined the climbing club at Leeds University during a student exchange. “The whole climbing thing was completely new to me,” she recalls, but it quickly became her entire world. She immersed herself in the club, attending gym meetups and weekend trips to the Peak District, Northumberland and Wales. “I just signed up for everything,” says Bronwyn, which seems typical of her all-in approach to everything she does.

Pretty soon after joining the club, she met her now husband, fellow climber and Rab athlete, Jacob Cook. Climbing with Jacob and his friends was a fast-track to growth in the sport, “Being surrounded by people that were already experienced and trying really hard to challenge themselves meant that I progressed quite quickly, I just thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll challenge myself too.’” She was a fast learner with the endurance of a former middle-distance runner, and shaped by her outdoorsy upbringing in Ontario, Canada, hiking, camping and skiing. “My family was also really intensely into canoeing, which is a fun Canadian stereotype!” laughs Bronwyn. Packing their camping equipment and enough supplies for several weeks, the Hodgins family would journey along remote rivers deep in the Canadian backcountry. “I then found myself in a cool position where I already knew how to survive in the wilderness and pack a menu for multi week, sometimes multi month, self-sufficient adventures in remote locations. And then I also had this new rock-climbing skill set and realised I could combine the two.”

After several years of climbing and expeditions that continued to mount in duration and complexity, Bronwyn found herself in need of a break. “By the end of summer of 2022, I’d come off the back of three huge expeditions in Mexico, Chile and Greenland, with just enough time to unpack in between, I hit a bit of a wall,” says Bronwyn. “I realised I’d reached my limit and it wasn’t sustainable, I was completely exhausted and mentally fried.” Unmotivated, tired and struggling to come up with a plan for the rest of the year, she cast around for ideas. Planning adventures felt overwhelming but sport climbing, with its relatively lower risk level and minimal logistical effort, seemed doable. “Compared to Greenland, where we shipped all our food and equipment by sea cargo five months in advance and then paddled 450km to the wall we planned to climb, the idea of going sport climbing in Spain seemed like a holiday.” 

It was on this first trip to Spain that the idea for La Rubia began to take root. A friend suggested she go check out the Chilam Balam cave at Villanueva del Rosario - there was a line there that would suit her athletic climbing style. “Even being kind of an ambitious big dreamer, La Rubia seemed like a crazy idea,” says Bronwyn. “I looked it up and I was like… Funny joke. That is way too hard for me! But we went to see the cave anyway and it had these crazy tufa stalactites dripping down from the wall that makes for this interesting 3D climbing where you can use these features as handles and footholds. I really love that style of climbing.” 

She dismissed the climb as out of her reach, but the yawning cave high on the hillside, its limestone surface a chaotic masterpiece of tufas, knee-bar rests, and razor sharp crimps, stuck in her mind. She started to wonder, “Why am I setting myself these barriers? How hard could I climb?” It was the spark of motivation she hadn’t felt in months, although it came from a place she wasn’t expecting. She latched onto that fire and reached out to Maddy Cope at Lattice Training in Sheffield, “I'd read this research around how training can be different for female bodies and so having a female mentor and coach who was at a super elite level, who I really respected, was really appealing.” 

She spent the next eight months following Maddy’s training plan, which covered the full spectrum of climbing-specific energy systems, but with a special focus on attacking her weaknesses - brute power and pinch strength. When she returned to Spain the following winter, she held the prospect of sending La Rubia as lightly as possible - there were lots of easier routes to pivot to and this was supposed to be a break, right? “It's hard to get the challenge level right and I’d never attempted this type of project before. But I figured, let's dive into this for one year and see what happens.” She arrived in Spain with climber and guide Lindsey Hamm, and filmmaker Julia Cassou, and although the climb itself was a solitary endeavour – “It was me, versus me.” – the project reinforced the importance of supportive friendships. “The three of us had such a great time together, so it wasn’t just this really challenging thing I had set myself to do. By having the rest of the experience be very light and fun, it allowed me to dig really deep into the intensity of the actual climb.” 

Although it hadn’t been part of her original goal, Bronwyn’s project naturally evolved into a female-focused story. She collaborated closely with Julia on storytelling, climbed alongside a number of female partners, and had the support of Andrea Cartas, a local crusher and the third woman to climb La Rubia. She also organised a women's climbing day, drawing a diverse mix of climbers of all abilities, ages, and nationalities to the crag. “Mountain sport spaces are still very male-dominated, but women are just as physically and mentally capable in these environments,” says Bronwyn. “Women-only events, female-led films, and greater representation in leadership roles can make climbing feel much more accessible.” Taking that belief a step further, Bronwyn also committed to hiring only women for post-production, from editing to sound design and colour grading - even the film’s soundtrack features female artists. 

After five weeks of deciphering the climb with Lindsey’s support - plus a gruelling second five-week stint in Spain, juggling schedules and partners while battling the creeping doubt that she'd taken on too much - her final push, supported by pro climber Emilie Pellerin, ended in triumph. “The actual day that I sent it was the coldest day of the whole season. The wind was blowing so much I almost didn't even want to climb,” she remembers. Shaking off frozen fingers, she climbed smoothly and faster than ever all the way up to the final bolt (where she had fallen on her last attempt a few days earlier). “I tactically skipped the final knee bar so that I didn't interrupt my mental flow and launched myself with all I had left for the big move just next to the chains. I still can't believe my fingers latched onto that hold!” 

A year after the climb, the project is still going strong. Bronwyn has been deep in post-production, juggling a mountain of administrative tasks, managing budgets, coordinating with editors and preparing for distribution. But revisiting the story has also given her space for self-reflection. “There’s been a lot of personal learning around how I interact with the world. I always joked with my friends how I’m terrible at chilling, but I think the biggest lesson for me was recognising when I need to take a break, and learning how to really thrive in these projects, but not let them crush me. In the past I thought that anything that's not physical is a break, like working on my computer is a rest from climbing and climbing is a rest from my computer. I realise I had a hard time allowing myself time that's neither of those things.” These days, rest for Bronwyn doesn’t necessarily mean lying on a beach, but it also doesn’t mean diving headfirst into another intense climbing project. Redefining what recovery looks like and releasing the pressure to constantly be productive has been a significant milestone. “I’ve really been leaning in to learning languages and I’ve reached a point where I’m pretty fluent in French and Spanish. I’m also really into Fusion dancing right now! It’s like improvised creative partner dancing and it’s a lot of fun.”